After the surprise attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States grew concerned that people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast would revolt and aid the Japanese war effort and were considered security risks. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, giving the War Department authority to establish military areas in which designated people would be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War may impose. As a result, officials declared the entire Pacific Coast a military area and forced approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent from their homes and into guarded relocation centers in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington. Two-thirds of the evacuees were American citizens and many lost their homes and businesses as a result of the internment. The directive remained official policy until December 1944 (Patton 72). While many people have at least some knowledge of this Japanese internment, the postwar Japanese American effort to win redress, and its high point of the 1980s, is not that well known. The process of apology and redress was very drawn out and it was not unti

Only by recognizing an injustice can one begin to address it. And, it seems that making a formal apology is somewhat symbolic of learning a lesson from past mistakes. In this case, one must identify that a grievance has occurred and acknowledge that something should be done to rectify the issue before an apology can be made. Also, through this apology, it is portrayed that the offender has learned something from the situation and will not repeat the same offense in the future. However, as Justice Robert Jackson warned in his powerful dissent from the majority's opinion in the Supreme Court case of Fred Korematsu, "Once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need"(Raskin 118). This issue has reemerged recently as the terrorist attacks of September 11 have been compared to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Similar to the attack of Pearl Harbor launching us into World War II, the attack of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has instigated an unfamiliar, new kind of war against terrorism. In both cases, the unexpected attacks shattered the nation's feeling of national security. In the current situation, Congress passed, and President Bush signed, a new federal safety bill called the PATRIOT Act, in attempts of fighting terrorism. The Patriot Act gives search and seizing authority to federal law enforcement allowing them to search, investigate, detain, and wiretap whomever they choose without court approval.

In 1948, President Truman signed the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act allowing reimbursements for losses of property. Some 23,000 claims were filed asking for $131 million, but the Federal Government recompensed Japanese Americans just $38,000,000 or about 29 cents for every dollar claimed (Daniels 89). In the 1970s, Nisei and Sansei (second and third generation Japanese Americans) spearheaded the Redress Movement, seeking personal justice for every Japanese American imprisoned during World War II. They asked for personal justice in the form of an apology from the United States and monetary compensation for individuals. They reminded the public that in 1942 they, as American citizens, were denied due process of law and that the forced imprisonment of innocent civilians was a serious breach of the democratic principles (Pak 14). In 1976, President Gerald Ford used the thirty-fourth anniversary of F.D.R.'s Executive Order 9066 to formally repeal it (Daniels 90). Congress appointed a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians during President Carter's term to investigate the charges. Although President Reagan opposed an apology and compensation to Japanese Americans for the major

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Approximate Word count = 2064
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)